The invention relates to apparatus for automatically dividing articles conveyed on the article packing machine into parallel lanes. In bottle handling machines, bottles are typically conveyed on a conveyor in a co-mingled manner. It is often necessary to separate the articles into aligned parallel rows for further conveyance of the articles to a packing station. At the packing station the bottles are often packed into containers with partitioned sockets. The spacing of the bottles in the parallel rows by means of distinct lanes facilitates the packing of the bottles in the containers. Aligning of the co-mingled bottles into parallel rows is a problem to which considerable attention need be given.
Prior bottle handling machines such as the case packing machine shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,481,108 and 3,555,770 have utilized a plurality of parallel spaced guide rails for separating the co-mingled mass of bottles into aligned parallel rows. Quite often, however, the bottles become tilted on the conveyor and fall over in front of the guide rails causing the bottles to jam up in front of the guide rails requiring the stopping of the conveyor and repositioning of the bottles in an upright position by a machine attendant. U.S. Pat. No. 4,029,195 proposes cone-shaped guide members which wedge the tilted bottles into an upright position so that they may be guided individually into the parallel rows between the spaced rails.
Swing-arm article guiding chutes have been proposed for use on bottle loading packing machines to feed the bottles into lanes. One proposed swing-arm device was manufactured by the Vicker's Miller/Hydro Mfgr. Co. of Bainbridge, Ga. To swing the chute, optical sensors were proposed to find the lanes which controlled electrical solenoid switches which, in turn, controlled an electric motor to swing the chute across the conveyor. An air cylinder piston rod provides a gate to hold the leading bottle in the chute until a lane is reached. The optical/solenoid control swing-arm device is complicated and expensive owing to the electrical wiring and other electrical elements required. The environment in which the swing-arm chute operates is not entirely suitable for optical sensor operation. The gate of the chute does not afford effective control of bottles tilting at the gate.
Accordingly, an important object of the present invention is to provide apparatus for automatically guiding articles conveyed on an article loading machine into spaced parallel rows.
Still another important object of the present invention is to provide apparatus for handling bottles in a co-mingled mass and automatically guiding and feeding any number of bottles into spaced parallel rows between spacer rails on an article loading machine.
Still another important object of the present invention is to provide apparatus for automatically releasing bottles individually into lanes defined by spaced guide rails on a bottle loading machine.
Yet another important object of the present invention is to provide apparatus for holding individual articles upright on an article loading machine and releasing the individual article at a desired position so that the article is automatically conveyed upright into a desired lane between two spacer rails.
Still another important object of the present invention is to provide apparatus which automatically releases bottles into lanes defined between spacer rails on an article loading machine and indexes the releasing of the articles at an entrance end of a desired lane across the width of the conveyor.